Hello, I really need help r/personalfinance. So I have two side to side situations financial situations going on that I need help with. This one covers the medical bills. and this is the college one.
I am a 21 year old college student and as the title states, am in $25k debt in medical bills. This is the amount I owe to several medical facilities for an emergency situation (heart palpitations, excessive sweating essentially a panic attack induced from marijuana use, I called 9.1.1 because I freaked out. Bad idea) from Dec 2016. I was rushed to the ER in an ambulance and then transferred to a hospital where I stayed for about half a day (I was sedated so don't quite remember but I was brought early morning and left around 6pm). I have been charged around 17,000 from the hospital and then have gotten around 5-6 more bills from Fire Dept, doctors and ER. A lot of the doctors I don't even remember seeing but that's not saying much because I was asleep most of the time. The bills add up to an outrageous amount and my insurance (Molina Healthcare through market place) only paid around 9-10 percent of it. They didn't cover a huge chunk (disallowed amount?) as seen in the Explanation of Benefits document they sent for each bill and said that it should have been "waived off". It wasn't and I'm being balanced billed. I've more of less chose to ignore the situation and its been almost 9 months now. Im getting more and more calls every other day about the balances being due. Ive admittedly been a bit lazy about this all but with school problems now (listed below) I cant do that anymore. My parents are very poor and I myself only have a 100 dollars in my bank account. I did file an charity application with the hospital a month ago which required additional documents but I got busy and never got to it. They did say there isn't a deadline to send required documents but after 10 or so days the committee usually closes the case.
1.What can I do to tackle this problem? 2. This is my first time dealing with a hospital about medical bills but it seriously doesn't make sense to me to be charged this much for something that wasn't even invasive. I'm certain the hospital and doctors are overcharging/wrongfully charging me but have no way to prove it. What can I do about that?
3a. If I file another charity application with complete documentation, how should I approach that? How to word, what to write, just everything that might make my chances of completely being forgiven the debt or being forgiven a chunk of it better?
3b. Is there a way to approach the doctors and clinics that have charged me but do not have a charity application for discounts? Ive asked a lot of them already and usually theyre willing to give time but not discounts. They almost always refuse to acknowledge the fact that I still can't pay it and that I have other bills and expenses.
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I do suspect some of the bills have been transferred to collections now because numbers im getting calls from arent from clinics. Is that the point of no return now where I can't expect discounts or help since it has already been forwarded to collection agencies.
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How will the situation that I'm in and the situation this can turn into affect my credit? I don't even have a credit card right now and am afraid to get one because of this now.
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I have appealed to my insurance and they haven't been of help. I've just been told that according to the state of Texas hospitals and clinics can balance bill which is what they're doing and there's nothing the insurance will do about it. Even though their EOB documents say a different amount.
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I am more than willing to get a job and work my ass off to get rid of this problem however I am college student and not only does my schedule conflicts, I don't have a car so getting to and back to work is also really hard. It takes me an hour by public transport just to get to campus and back. I have mostly evening classes. I have looked for online/ work from home jobs to no avail (if you can help with this specfically, please dm me).
In addition to all of this, again, I am in another serious financial problem with not being able to afford school and losing my financial aid. I've decided to make another post about that. If you can, read both because my inability to pay one of these amounts stems from the other and vice versa.
Any other comments concerns or questions about this are welcome and appreciated. If anything is unclear, please message me. Thanks a lot for reading.
** TLDR: Had a medical emergency and got balance billed for 90% of amount (~25,000). Need advice about what i can with regards to insurance, hospitals and clincs charging me and how I can get to paying the remaining balance myself. **
Submitted August 23, 2017 at 04:36AM by brownbish http://ift.tt/2wxiS2g
